Summary: This sermon presents the Feast of the Passover and how it relates to Christ as our Passover.

Introduction: Last Sunday morning we began a series on the feasts of Israel, and i showed you, from Leviticus 23, how God has set out a plan of the ages, a great prophetic calendar whereby the history of the Jewish people from the time of Christ to the end has been predicted. The first four feasts, are the spring time feasts and these have been fulfilled in Christ’s first coming, the last three feasts the autumn feasts are yet to be fulfilled, but will be fulfilled as perfectly as the first four when Jesus Christ comes to earth a second time.

Now the first in order of the seven solemn feasts is the Feast of Passover. Symbolically it typifies the foundation of the full accomplishment of God’s plan for the salvation of sinners. And that plan centres around a lamb.

That lamb is pictorial. It pictures Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. 1 Corinthians 5:7 says “For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” In Leviticus Moses simpy lists the Passover as the first among God’s appointed feasts, but in Exodus chapter 12 we are given a more comprehensive picture of the feast leading us to one of the most dramatic and complete types of Christ in the Old Testament.

I. The Selection of the Lamb - vss 1- 3

A. Now the Passover was necessitated by the tenth plague that was to befall ancient Egypt.

1. For four hundred years the Hebrew people have been in Egypt as slaves and they have been crying out to God.

a. In response God has provided a deliverer - Moses.

b. But Pharaoh wouldn’t hear Moses so the land of Egypt was subject to a series of plagues, awful judgments each one a challenge to the gods of Egypt.

(i) Water has been turned into blood, there was frogs, lice and flies, hail and fire, disease and darkness and yet Pharaoh remained intransigent, unwilling to move, unwilling to bow to the God of Israel - sso in the 10th plague he is about to experience - the death of the firstborn.

(ii) God’s angel of death was to pass through the land and every firstborn son was to die in one night.

B. From the moment God forewarned of this plague He made known His intent to “put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.” (Exodus 11:7b).

1. We shall say more about this difference in a bit, but let me say to you from the first, that the difference between Egypt and Israel hinged upon a lamb.

2. You see the death of the firstborn was upon all that were in the land of Egypt.

3. The Israelites were in Egypt - failure to accept God’s prescription meant death would come to their homes just as readily as it would visit any Egyptian home.

4. Whether an Israelite lived or died depended upon what he did with the lamb.

B. Now notice in verse 3 “In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house.” (Exodus 12:3).

1. Every home was required to set apart and single out a lamb.

2. In the generations to come the Passover lamb was to be chosen for four days prior to the slaughter.

3. For four days the lamb was appointed unto death.

4. Now this speaks to us of Christ.

5. Not for four days, but for the better part of four years the Lord Jesus ministered upon this earth.

6. At the very outset of his ministry He wound his way to the banks of Jordan to be baptised of John, and as he approached that prophet John the Baptist took one look at Him and cried out “ Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

7. In that moment John singled Jesus out. In that moment Christ was set apart for death.

8. Before he uttered the first words of His ministry, before He had called a single disciple, before He had performed His first miracle, Jesus was appointed unto death. He was singled out from the flock of Israel.

C. Jesus was marked out for death before He was actually slain.

1. The death of Christ was no surprise.

2. It was not a surprise to God the father, nor was it a surprise to God the Son.

3. All along the intention of God was have Jesus put to death.

a. The apostle Peter records that we are redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” (1 Peter 1:19-20).